Tag: berlin’s best

Were you already waiting for this one? I certainly was getting impatient! However, thanks to a bit of scheduling kerfuffle, it took a bit longer to assemble a powerful jury for this years’ Berlin’s Best Bread competition. For the fifth time, I invited a number of local artisanal bakeries to submit their best bread to find the most delicious crusty crust and crumbly crumb in all of the city. It took us three hours of non-stop tasting to judge all seventeen submissions and crown the winner in three categories. Read on to find out who won, you might be surprised!

In celebration of the relaunch of the map of this very blog, I decided to write “one of those articles”, a boiled down list of current favorite places to eat in this very city. Because of course these are the questions I receive the most: What’s your favorite restaurant? What’s the best place for sweets? Where do I get the best brunch? What’s the best ice cream? And yes, I do have answers. Very personal, subjective ones, that is. So this is not a final list, nor one that claims to be exhaustive, or timeless. I’ve only added brick-and-mortar places, no pop-ups, no trucks, no supper clubs. And there’s no hierarchy. But seriously, if I had to tell you 10 of my favorites, these are it.

Coming out of this years’ Berlin’s Best Bread competition, where the line-up of breads made only with sourdough was so high in quality, we were all surprised and very excited about the state of bread in Berlin. So I decided to hold another competition of a baked treat that I and many others love dearly: the cinnamon bun! This idea was pushed by the fact that the cinnamon bun, kanelbullar, or Zimtschnecke seemed to be everywhere – a trend I explicitly welcomed. So I called some trustworthy bun-thusiasts to join me in the quest of finding the bestest bun in town. However, the outcome wasn’t what we expected.

First of all, before I even begin to summarize our annual Berlin’s Best Bread competition of 2017, I have to say that bread in Berlin has become so much more diverse compared to when we started in 2013 – back then, we only found few bakeries who used only sourdough as a leaven, making bread in an artisanal, small-scale way. Today, more and more Berlin bakers choose exactly this method, that, while not being as predictable and thus controllable like others, makes for individual and high-quality loafs. Because the proofing of the dough is more sensitive than with other rising agents, the baker needs to give it more attention, and I believe this creates a closer bond, a better understanding of what makes bread. So, finally, we were able to ask only for sourdough-breads without yeast or other helpers for our annual tasting in the goal to find Berlin’s tastiest loaf.

2016 has been a very long year, and oftentimes not a pretty one. And it still has four days left, so I won’t bid farewell too soon (to not give it any ideas!), but it’s about time for my annual report of what’s been most popular on this very blog. Because for the very limited world of this humble blog, it’s been a good year. Not only did we celebrate ten years of it: first with a lavish birthday dinner, and then with a grande breakfast market, but there was also the second edition of The Map, a very successful third clothing donation rally, loads of fun times at Burgers & Hip Hop, and a dessert-only extravaganza. I’ve enjoyed it a lot to be able to work on this outlet describing Berlin’s greatness, and am more than proud that enough people are interested reading my musings.